Twitter raises its GIF size limit to 15 MB on the web

Twitter updated its support page, and it now says the GIF size limit for the web has increased to 15 MB from the old 5 Mb. The company has made no official statement, and no one really knows when it decided to increase it. According to the Verge, GIF fans and people who checked out the support page, for whatever reason, spotted the update. The upgrade applies only to Twitter on the web. For people that only use it on Android or iOS, the limit is still 5 MB.

The Graphic Interchange Format was first launched in 1987 with the intention of giving color to small logos. It was a very practical feature that CompuServe developed at the time. However, everything changed when the colored pictures became short animations. The internet community well received this little change, and even though it has been used for many purposes, comedy is still the number one use a GIF has on the net.

Twitter recently expanded its GIF limit form 5MB to 15 MB, just for the web. Credit: Bustle.com

The technology used to compress the data without losing quality has really improved since the late 80s. That is why people are not just able to animate a picture, but also, they can capture parts of a movie, cartoon or video into a GIF. In fact, any kind of visual content can be used in this format.

Twitter wants to make it easier for people to use Gifs

This file format has always been characterized as being simple and short. It gave birth to a new comedy genre in the on-line world. That makes a lot of people wonder why anybody would like to use GIFs that are so large. Make no mistake, 15 MB is a huge lot of data in this format, and sure there is going to be a lot of people finding ways to use it, but they will be restrained to Twitter. Most websites and social media services only support 5 MB GIFs, so only Twitter users will benefit from the upgrade, for now.

The social media monster announced this February a new tool that allows users to access this kind of content quickly. If people want to express something in a more creative way, they can access the GIF search bar and reach a huge database with millions of options. The new GIF button on Twitter was supposed to be inspired by the sheer amount of GIFs posted on the social media. According to a post made by the staff of the company, users shared over one hundred million (100,000,000) in 2015. The feature was made available in February this year.

“Whenever you’re composing a Tweet or Direct Message, you can search and browse the GIF library. So if you’re looking for the perfect cat yawn or dance move to express exactly how you feel, just click the new GIF button. You can search by keyword, or browse categories of different reactions like Happy Dance, Mic Drop, or YOLO,” reads the post on Twitter’s blog.

The company has been expanding its multimedia capacity including videos, but as a curious fact, the staff hasn’t made an official statement on this upgrade. It could as well be part of a bigger surprise the staff has for the second half of the year. Another curious fact is that the modification that shows the 15 MB update can only be seen in English. In any other language, the bit of info does not exist.